by Dave Barry
“You mean like a cow?” said Taylor. “Ants can kill a cow?”
“It happens, especially if the cow has been tied up and can’t run. Goats and dogs, too. The ants look for openings, so they go into the animal’s mouth and nose, thousands and thousands of them, filling up the airways so the animal can’t breathe. It dies from asphyxiation, and then the ants tear it apart.”
“Ew,” said Taylor.
“Can they kill people?” I said.
“If you can walk, you can get away from them,” he said. “If you can’t walk—say you broke a leg and you’re lying on the ground, or for some reason you’re unconscious, if the siafu get to you…” He shook his head. “That’s a very, very unpleasant way to die.”
For a few seconds nobody said anything. Then I said, “So you’re saying that’s what was in the container? Ants?”
He nodded. “Apparently.”
“But how is that even possible? How do you get twenty million ants into a box?”
“I’ve thought about that. I think the way they must have done it is by putting on hazmat suits and attacking a siafu hill with earthmoving equipment while the colony was inside. If they were organized and moved fast, they could do it before the colony could organize and move. Scoop them up in the dirt, dump them in the container, toss some meat in there for food, close the container up, and seal it tight. I think it could be done. I mean, obviously, it was done. The question is, why?”
“You already said why,” said Taylor. “Bevin is collecting dangerous animals.”
“Yeah, but here’s the thing. Collectors like to be able to look at their animals, to watch them move, and especially to watch them eat. They keep them in cages or display cases so they can see them. You can’t do that with a sealed container. You’d have to be crazy to even open it. But at some point, they have to open it, or the ants will starve to death in there. So why did Frank Bevin go to all that trouble to bring them here from Africa? And why is he assembling the zoo from hell in his backyard? It’s driving me crazy, especially that I can’t do anything about it, can’t even talk to anybody about it without getting arrested. So when I heard about you and the Komodo dragon…”
“How did you hear about that?” I said.
“Like I said, I have a police source, a guy who doesn’t like the way the higher-ups are rolling over for Bevin. He told me about you and your friend Matt getting picked up, and he told me where you lived. I waited until late to come see you because we’d both get in trouble if anybody found out I was here. I hope that’s okay.”
“Totally okay,” said Taylor. She actually batted her eyelashes at him.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” I said. “But why are you here? I mean, what do you want from me?”
He rubbed his chin. “I’m not sure. Partly I just wanted to confirm that I’m not crazy about what’s going on over there. But I guess I was also hoping that you’d tell me something that would help me understand why it’s going on, and what I can do to stop it. Because whatever it is, it can’t be good.”
“But you can’t do anything about it,” I said. “You’ll get arrested.”
“I have to try,” he said. “I already feel responsible for one guy dying. I don’t want to be responsible for more.”
“But it’s not your fault, what the Bevins do.”
He looked at me. “I can’t just do nothing.”
“Well,” said Taylor, “we can’t do nothing, either. We can help.”
“We can?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “We can help you, Mr. Aibel.”
He smiled. “Call me Jon.”
“Okay, Jon,” she said, batting her eyelashes so hard she could have strained an eyelid muscle.
“The thing is,” he said, “at this point, I have no idea what I can do, and while I appreciate the offer of help…” He looked at Taylor and me, and he didn’t finish the sentence, but what he obviously was thinking was, I don’t see how I’m going to get much help from a ninth-grade boy who’s permanently grounded and a seventh-grade girl who’s acting like I’m her favorite boy band.
“Anyway,” he said, finally, “I really do appreciate it. But it’s going to be getting light soon. I better take off.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay,” said Taylor, in a much sadder voice.
“How about we exchange phone numbers, in case we need to get in touch,” he said.
So we exchanged numbers. Jon said good-bye, climbed out the window, and was gone.
As soon as the window closed, Taylor said, “He’s really cute.”
“Great,” I said.
“We have to help him.”
“Because he’s cute?”
“No, because he needs our help….Also because he’s cute.”
“How are we supposed to help him?”
“I don’t know. But we have to think of something.”
“Taylor, I’m already in huge trouble. I can’t—”
“Okay, don’t,” she said, standing up. “Don’t help him. Just sit around and feel sorry for yourself, and when something terrible happens, just tell yourself there was nothing you could do.”
I didn’t have anything to say to that.
She turned around and walked out.
I tried to sleep, but every time I drifted off, the Komodo dragon with Principal Metzinger’s voice was chasing me. I would wake up, sweating, and then I’d drift back to sleep, and there would be the Principal Metzinger dragon again. And I couldn’t get away from the feeling that sooner or later, no matter how hard I tried to run, it was going to catch me.
You know how sometimes, when you’re waking up from a bad dream, it still seems real, and then you realize it was just a dream and you feel relieved?
I had the opposite experience Sunday morning. I woke up thinking, Whoa, thank goodness I’m not being chased by a Komodo dragon inhabited by The Stinger. And then I remembered that my actual situation was worse. So between that and Jon showing up in the middle of the night, I didn’t get much sleep.
We had pancakes for breakfast because my dad always makes pancakes for breakfast on Sundays. He makes them from scratch, and he uses like seventy-three bowls, so when he’s done the kitchen looks like a batter bomb exploded. But they’re good pancakes.
I didn’t say anything during breakfast because I was tired and I was pretty sure that whatever I said would result in a lecture from my mom. Taylor didn’t say anything, either, because she was listening to something on headphones. It was so loud we could all hear it.
“Turn that down!” my mom said. “You’re going to ruin your ears!”
“What?” said Taylor.
“YOU’RE GOING TO RUIN YOUR EARS.”
“She’s ruining my ears,” said my dad. “That doesn’t sound like music. That sounds like somebody trying to kill an elephant by hitting it with electric guitars.”
My dad doesn’t like any music that wasn’t popular when he was young. He likes bands where like half the people who were in them are dead now.
“What?” said Taylor, again.
My mom leaned over and pulled the right headphone away from Taylor’s ear. “I said TURN IT DOWN.”
Taylor rolled her eyes and turned it down.
“What band is that?” I asked. It didn’t sound like her usual music.
“Snot House,” she said.
“What house?” asked my dad.
“Snot.”
He just shook his head, the way grown-ups do when they’re thinking: These kids today.
“So suddenly you’re a big Snot House fan, huh?” I said.
She stuck out her tongue. So far that was the highlight of my weekend.
After breakfast I went back to my room to resume being grounded. I almost fell back asleep, but then I started getting texts from Matt and Victor asking what was going on. I started to text them about Jon Aibel, but it got too complicated, so we did a three-way Skype call. When I told them about all the other animals the Bevins were bringing in, the
y both basically freaked out, especially when I got to the part about the ants.
“Why do they have ants?” said Matt.
“Why do they have any of those things?” I said.
“This Fish and Wildlife guy,” said Victor. “Did he tell you what he was going to do next?”
“No,” I said. “I got the feeling he thought I wouldn’t be much help anyway.”
“Don’t you think we need to do something?” said Matt.
“Like what?” I said. “We tried to do something, remember? Look where it got us. We’re grounded for life and Victor’s drone got shot down.”
“But what if those things get out? People live around there.”
“I know, but what can we do about it?”
“It would help,” said Victor, “if we knew what he planned to do with those things.”
All three of us got quiet then, because nobody had any ideas. Before anybody came up with one, the door opened and Taylor came into my room. She was carrying a newspaper.
“Look at this,” she said, shoving it in my face.
“Thanks for knocking,” I said.
“What?” said Matt.
“Not you. I’m talking to Taylor.”
“Just look at this, will you?” said Taylor.
I looked. It was a full-page ad for the Miami Zoo, which was having some kind of Halloween event.
“Taylor,” I said, pushing it away. “I can’t go to the zoo. I’m grounded, remember? Besides, right now I’m—”
“JUST READ IT, YOU DOPE.” She shoved it back in my face.
So I read it.
Then I looked at Taylor.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said.
“What is it?” said Victor.
“Yeah,” said Matt. “What is it?”
“Do you guys have today’s Miami Herald?” I said.
They both said they did.
“Go get the front section. Look at the back page.”
“But what is it?” said Matt.
“Just go get it.”
They both left, and while they were gone I read the ad again. At the top was a big color drawing of a creepy-looking pumpkin with a grinning mouth full of jagged teeth. The eyeholes were glowing circles, and next to them was a letter Z in red, painted in what looked like blood, so with the eyeholes it spelled ZOO. Under the pumpkin it said:
Want To Do Something REALLY
Scary This Halloween?
Come See The Miami Zoo’s
KILLER KRITTERS
A Once In A Lifetime Exhibit
Of The Planet’s Deadliest
Land Animals
Join Us For Our Killer
Halloween Night
Bash
5 TO 11 P.M.
Music! Food! Games! Things With Fangs!
See The Killer
Kritters Up Close
But Don’t Get Too Close
.....
Under that were color photos of animals labeled with their names. The biggest one was of a Komodo dragon, taken from ground level aiming up at its head, so it looked like Godzilla getting ready to wreck a city. The caption said it was “the largest lizard on earth, and a lethal hunter.”
Under that was a picture of a snake with black, spooky-looking eyes and its mouth wide open, like it was about to strike. It was labeled “Black Mamba,” and the caption called it “the world’s deadliest snake.”
Under that was a big, ugly, hairy spider labeled “Brazilian Wandering Spider.” The caption said: “It’s aggressive, and it’s the world’s most venomous spider. Its genus name—Phoneutria—is the ancient Greek word for ‘murderess.’”
Under that was a yellowish-brown scorpion with its tail curled up over its back. The label said it was a “Deathstalker Scorpion.” Like all scorpions, it looked like some kind of gross mutant lobster, the absolute last thing you would want crawling on you. “Its sting can kill you,” said the caption.
Under that was a picture of a poison dart frog, which was actually kind of cool looking. It had a bright yellow-and-black pattern on its skin, which according to the label “secretes a deadly toxin sometimes used on the tips of poison blow darts.”
Near the bottom, above the information about how to see the exhibit, was a picture of an ant. It was just an ant, but in a way it was the scariest picture on the page because it had this big head with two nasty-looking pincers.
I shivered a little just looking at it, thinking about the pincers going into my skin. The label said “Siafu, or African Driver Ants.” The caption said: “They may be small, but they swarm by the millions, devouring everything in their path. You don’t want to get in their way.”
“Okay,” said Victor, back on Skype. He held up the zoo ad. “This is weird.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Really weird.”
Now Matt was back, also holding the newspaper. “It looks like a pretty cool exhibit,” he said. “But we can’t go, right? I mean, we’re grounded.”
He can be such an idiot.
“Matt,” I said, “we’re not talking about going to the exhibit.”
“We’re not?”
“Didn’t you notice what animals are in the exhibit?”
He looked at the pictures for a few seconds, then said, “Ohhhh.”
“Yeah.”
“So,” said Victor, “why would Bevin be collecting the same animals as the zoo has in their exhibit?”
“Could it possibly be just a coincidence?” I said.
“That would be some coincidence,” said Victor.
“We should tell Jon about this,” said Taylor.
“Who’s Jon?” said Victor.
“Taylor’s new boyfriend,” I said, leaning back to avoid the punch Taylor threw at me. “He’s the Fish and Wildlife guy I was telling you about.”
“We need to tell him,” said Taylor, “about the zoo thing.”
“I think maybe she’s right,” said Victor. “There has to be some connection between Bevin and the zoo. Maybe this Jon guy will know what it is.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll tell him.”
“I’ll see if I can find anything out,” said Victor. “Maybe there’s been something else in the newspaper.”
“What should I do?” asked Matt.
“Just keep thinking,” I said.
“Okay!” he said. Apparently he thought I was serious.
We agreed we’d let each other know if anybody found out anything new, then ended the Skype session. I took a picture of the zoo ad and texted it to Jon with a message that that said: check out the animals. I waited a minute for an answer, but didn’t get one. Meanwhile Taylor was thumbing away on her phone.
“Okay,” she said, standing up. “I’m going to Marissa’s house.”
I looked at her. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you say Marissa lives in Bay Estates?”
She smiled. “Yup. And guess who lives right next door.”
“Really? The Bevins?”
“Yup.”
“Taylor, don’t go over there.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Taylor, seriously, they’re dangerous. The animals and the people.”
“I promise I’ll be careful,” she said, opening the door.
“Yeah, but—”
She was gone.
Here’s the weird thing. For as long as I could remember, if you asked me what I thought about my sister, I’d have told you she was the most annoying person on the planet. Which she definitely was. But all of a sudden, now that she was involved in…Well, I really didn’t know what she was involved in. But I knew I was the reason she was. And now, weirdly, I was worried about my annoying sister, who was out there trying to do something about it—whatever it was—while I was stuck in my room, possibly for eternity.
I tried to think of something I could do from my room. But I couldn’t think of anything except how tired I was. Pretty soon, still trying to think, I fell asleep.
Just call me Captain Action.
I woke up to the sound of my phone burping. There were two texts right in a row. The first one was from Jon, about the zoo ad:
trying to figure this out. talk later
The second text was from Victor:
call me
I decided to check on Taylor first. She wasn’t in her room, which made me a little worried because it was getting dark. Also I felt guilty sleeping while she was trying to find stuff out. I went to the family room. My dad was on the sofa, watching the Dolphins, who were playing the Jets. Just so you know, if you’re from Miami, you hate the Jets. I’m not sure why you do. You just do. I even hate them, and I’m not really into football.
“Dad,” I said, “do you know where Tay—”
“Why do they do this to me?” he said, staring at the screen.
“Do what?” I said.
“This!” he said, pointing at the TV. “Third and eight! And they do this!”
“What did they do?”
“THEY RAN.” Finally he looked at me. “Why do they DO that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. This was true: I honestly didn’t know.
“On third and eight,” he said. “Third and eight!”
“Huh. Do you know if—”
“Not third and one. Not third and two. Third and eight! THIRD. AND. EIGHT.”
“Huh,” I said. “Anyway, about Taylor, do—”
“YOU HAVE TO THROW THE BALL!” he said.
“Right. So do you—”
“THIS IS THE NFL! YOU HAVE TO PUT IT IN THE AIR!”
“No question,” I said, leaving the family room. I found my mom in the bedroom, watching a movie on TV. She’s not into sports.
“Don’t go into the family room,” I told her. “Dad’s pretty upset about the Dolphins.”
“Why?” she said.
